Outlook becoming slower than usual

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dean
  • Start date Start date
D

Dean

I have been complaining a lot lately about my XP computer being slow and
programs crashing, but actually, most of the problems have been with Outlook
(2003, SP2) being slow, and Outlook Express being slow and crashing. With
regard to Outlook, isn't there some sort of no-risk (or low-risk) repair
sequence that can't hurt to try? Or some sort of compress routine - like
defrag - to make it more efficient. If so, I'd like to try them. The only
thing that is important to me is to keep all my e-mails easily available as,
at my age, they are my memory and I really do search them often - so I'd
rather not archive any, so kindly don't suggest anything like that. I did
do a conversion to unicode about a year ago and that took care of my
too-many-emails problem.

The same questions apply for Outlook Express though I probably need to go to
the OE forum to ask about that.

Thanks!
Dean
 
You can do the following:

- Try a detect and repair from the Help Menu
- Run the Inbox repair tool (scanpst.exe) - just do a search for it,
double-click it, and follow the instructions.
- Compact your PST

Outlook Express I can't help you with, sorry.

Let me know what happens. If the above tips don't help, please post back.
 
Thanks Kathleen. Apparently, someone upgraded my Outlook from 2002 to 2003,
so they could install unicode for me. As a result, I don't have the
installation disk used and detect and repair suggests you might need such
disk, so I am waiting while they send it to me. I am also led to believe
now that having more than 1500 messages in any one (inbox) folder is bad, so
I have made subfolders to solve that and that does seem to help, especially
the initial loading time.

I will report back after I get the disk. I assume these 3 steps are pretty
much risk free, right?

Dean
 
Dean said:
I am
also led to believe now that having more than 1500 messages in any
one (inbox) folder is bad, so I have made subfolders to solve that
and that does seem to help, especially the initial loading time.
Click to expand...

Each Outlook folder can hold a minimum of 64K items. I don't think 1,500
would be any problem at all.
 
Ok, then. I guess my use of subfolders was not a total wasted effort, kind
of like organizing the stuff in the garage! Thanks!

What led to this was the fact that, at some point, when I opened Outlook,
sometime after this guy converted my PST to Unicode (which did stop the
running out of space errors), it would take about 30 seconds for the preview
pane (lower right) to fill up with the last e-mail in the inbox. Only then,
would it go into send/receive, which would typically take another 20
seconds. If Outlook is closed and re-opened on the same day, rather than
overnight, say, after being closed out for only 10 minutes, the 30 seconds
would be more like 3 seconds, perhaps why I mistakenly concluded yesterday
that the reduction to 1500 had helped. This AM, it was back to a longer
time to load.

Are these times typical? My vague recollection is that, as soon as Outlook
opened, the preview pane would be filled, prior to this Unicode change. My
memory isn't what it used to be!

Thanks Brian,
D
 
Dean said:
Are these times typical? My vague recollection is that, as soon as
Outlook opened, the preview pane would be filled, prior to this
Unicode change. My memory isn't what it used to be!
Click to expand...

Personally, I haven't really noticed. I start Outlook when my PC boots and
I leave it on all day. MOrelver, I'm patient enough that 12 seconds doesn't
mean much to me.
 
Thanks Ken, and Brian. Sorry about being late in getting back but the
detect and repair suggested I might need an installation disk and so I had
to wait to get it from the person who upgraded it from 2002 to 2003, and
then converted my pst to unicode. I now have done everything you
recommended and things do seem better.

I still find that it takes 30 to 40 seconds to load up in the morning,
during which time no e-mail appears in the preview pane. After that, it
then launches into the send/receive requests. Back before I was upgraded to
2003 and Unicode, I don't recall there being any noticeable time for that
preview pane to be filled and for it to launch into send/receive. It's not
that the 30 to 40 extra seconds, once a day, is such a big deal, but I
wonder if it is normal or indicative of a future problem.

Dean
 
Just to be clear, though the number of e-mails is surely way less than 64K,
the size of both the inbox and sent items is about 1.5 GB. Is that not a
problem?
 
Dean said:
Just to be clear, though the number of e-mails is surely way less
than 64K, the size of both the inbox and sent items is about 1.5 GB. Is
that not a problem?
Click to expand...

Depends. If it's an old-format ANSI PST left over from Outlook 2002 or
earlier, you can have problems start around 1.5 GB (although I' myself have
never experienced a performance problem without other problems being
manifest). If it's a Unicode PST, which is Outlook 2003's native format
PST, the its smallest maximum size is 20 GB and I've seen PSTs larger that
the 1.5 GB you mention that did not have performance problems,
 
It's Outlook 2003, so it sounds like inbox and sent item folders this big
should not be a problem , right?

Thanks, Brian!
Dean
 
Dean said:
It's Outlook 2003, so it sounds like inbox and sent item folders this
big should not be a problem , right?
Click to expand...

Unicode PSTs are supported out-of-the-box at 20 GB (which can be adjusted in
the registry) and there's no documented limit to the number of items each
folder can contain.

However, from a systems engineering perspective, huge folders (or PSTs for
that matter) are difficult for the human mind to track. You'd be better off
organizing things into multiple folders of related messages.
 
I do have many subfolders within my inbox. I was giving you the overall
inbox size. For sent items, I haven't felt the need.

Even though I just did it a couple of weeks ago, I guess I will go through
all the recommended procedures again and hope it helps. Outlook is just not
behaving well. If that doesn't work, is an uninstall and a reinstall (I
assume I would be able to re-import all my folders) likely to help?

Thanks!
Dean
 
I did all this at the time and it seemed to help, but things gradually got
worse, even worse than before. So, I did it all again last night but it did
not help. Everything is taking forever now, selecting an e-mail and waiting
for it to open, hitting reply and waiting for the reply message to come up,
switching from inbox to sent items, even typing within an e-mail.

When I backed up my PST prior to running scanpst.exe, I chose a new name and
it said there was not enough space, so I had to choose the same default
name. Though none of my other programs seem to be misbehaving, I now do
notice that I only have about 2.7GBs left on my 74 GB (design is 80) hard
drive. Could that be the cause of (only) Outlook being slow?

Any other suggestions for repair?

Thanks!
Dean
 
Just some more info update. I cleared out enough stuff so that I now have
about 7GB free, though I haven't done a defrag since then, and it doesn't
seem any better.
 
....and, yes, I did reboot.

Dean said:
I did all this at the time and it seemed to help, but things gradually got
worse, even worse than before. So, I did it all again last night but it
did not help. Everything is taking forever now, selecting an e-mail and
waiting for it to open, hitting reply and waiting for the reply message to
come up, switching from inbox to sent items, even typing within an e-mail.

When I backed up my PST prior to running scanpst.exe, I chose a new name
and it said there was not enough space, so I had to choose the same
default name. Though none of my other programs seem to be misbehaving, I
now do notice that I only have about 2.7GBs left on my 74 GB (design is
80) hard drive. Could that be the cause of (only) Outlook being slow?

Any other suggestions for repair?

Thanks!
Dean
Click to expand...
 
I posted earlier with a similar problem. I thought it might have to do
with our Exchange server over VPN. However, I don't have the same
problem with my laptop over the same line.

I also wondered about resource usage. I tried letting Task Manager run
when I started up Outlook. Outlook never took more than 30% of CPU,
and usually much less. When Outlook hung things, System Idle Process
was usually at 95 % or more, yet the whole desktop was crawling or
hung for minutes.

But here's the biggest oddity: If I run Outlook in Safe Mode, it goes
fast and has no hangups at all. I don't know that I'm missing anything
I need when in Safe Mode, so maybe I'll just use it all the time.
 
Back
Top